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"Set in Australia in the 1840s, A FRINGE OF LEAVES combines dramatic action with a finely distilled moral vision. Returning home to England from Van Diemen's land, the Bristol Maid is shipwrecked on the Queensland coast and Mrs Roxburgh is taken prisoner by a tribe of aborigines, along with the rest of the passengers and crew. In the course of her escape, she is torn by conflicting loyalties - to her dead husband, to her rescuer, to her own and to her adoptive class."
Source: GoodreadsNotes
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Dedication: To Desmond Digby
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Epigraph:
'A perfect Woman, nobly planned,/To warn, to comfort, and command.'. -William Wordsworth
Dialogue between Rat-Wife and Almers from Henrik Ibsen's Little Eyolf.
'If there is some true good in a man, it can only be unknown to himself.' - Simone Weil
'Love is your last chance. There is really nothing else on earth to keep you there.' -Louis Aragon
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille and sound recording.
- Sound recording. (2019)
Works about this Work
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'Why is it that the heroine could only be white?' : Patrick White’s Eliza Fraser and the (In)visible Machinery of Whiteness
2023
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Marginality in Australian Literature 2023; (p. 177-191) -
The Stench of Rotten Kangaroo : Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves in Postcolonial Literary History
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: I’m Listening Like the Orange Tree : In Memory of Laurie Hergenhan 2021; (p. 89-100) -
From Ellen Gluyas to Ellen Roxburgh to Mab : Shifting Identities in Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Narratives of Estrangement and Belonging : Indo-Australian Perspectives 2016; (p. 129-151)'This paper is an analysis of the characters in Patrick Whites' A Fringe of Leaves. Bansal states :
'This paper seeks to unravel Ennen's consistent formulation and reformulation of her identities from her childhood to her stay with the Aboriginals and later with Jack Chance, an escaped convict. It further shows how the novelist's concern with history is not fetishized or partisan but an impartial one where a character plunges into both the worlds and leaves it to the readers to find out which one is more humane. It would further explore the issues of belongingness and nostalgia in terms of Ellen Roxburgh's shifts in locale.' (130)
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'Time and Its Fellow Conspirator Space' : Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Patrick White beyond the Grave : New Critical Perspectives 2015; (p. 163-177) '...Brigid Rooney explores what she refers to as the 'chronotopic system' of the narative in White's A Fringe of Leaves (1976). (Introduction 9) -
Becoming Indigenous : A Comparative Analysis of Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves and Gail Jones' Sorry
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies – Proceedings of the 14th International Conference of Australian Studies in China 2015; (p. 123-131) 'Drawing on Deleuze's concept of 'becoming', this paper explores the indigenizing processes of the two female protagonists in Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves and Gail Jones' Sorry, respectively. Becoming-indigenous, as one form of becoming-minor, serves as an escape, a line of flight from the dominant molar lines of the majority, which, in these two novels, are represented b the binary oppositions of the white settlers and the Aboriginal people. The process of indigenization represents the white settlers' search for the possibility of white indigeneity, the potential for the white settlers' belonging within the land. Though focusing on different historical periods, the former on first contact, the latter on the assimilation period, both of the novels adopted the strategy of becoming as a counter-narrative and subverted the dominant European discourses, accommodating the spiritual needs of a young Australian in its continual urge towards self-definition.' (123)
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Varieties of Courage
1976
single work
review
— Appears in: LiNQ , vol. 5 no. 2 1976; (p. 91-98)
— Review of Miss Herbert (The Suburban Wife) 1976 single work novel ; A Fringe of Leaves 1976 single work novel -
A Woman's Life and Love
1976
single work
review
— Appears in: Quadrant , November vol. 20 no. 11 1976; (p. 62-63)
— Review of A Fringe of Leaves 1976 single work novel -
Nature and Legend
1976
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland , no. 65 1976; (p. 71-72)
— Review of A Fringe of Leaves 1976 single work novel -
[Review] A Fringe of Leaves
1976
single work
review
— Appears in: New Statesman , 10 September vol. 42 no. 1976; (p. 34)
— Review of A Fringe of Leaves 1976 single work novel -
[Review] A Fringe of Leaves
1976
single work
review
— Appears in: Listener , vol. 96 no. 1976; (p. 409-10)
— Review of A Fringe of Leaves 1976 single work novel -
'The Bee in the Hive' : Women and Knowledge in Patrick White's The Tree of Man and A Fringe of Leaves
1999
single work
criticism
— Appears in: A Fringe of Papers : Offshore Perspectives on Australian History and Literature 1999; (p. 87-105) Examines the construction of woman and the status of her knowledge within the pre-pastoral, pastoral, and anti-pastoral worlds evoked in the two novels by White. -
Patrick White's Aesthetic
1984
single work
criticism
— Appears in: LiNQ , [Triple Issue] vol. 12 no. 1-3 1984; (p. 55-70) The Pathos of Distance 1992; (p. 304-319) -
Patrick White and the Aesthetics of Death
1987
single work
criticism
— Appears in: LiNQ , vol. 15 no. 2 1987; (p. 2-14) The Pathos of Distance 1992; (p. 290-303) -
Patrick White: An International Perspective
1991
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Breaking Circles 1991; (p. 182-196) - y The Structure of Two Novels by Patrick White : The Eye of the Storm (1973) and A Fringe of Leaves (1976) 1979 Z1163297 1979 single work thesis
- Van Diemen's Land (1803-1856), Tasmania,
- Fraser Island, Maryborough - Hervey Bay - Fraser Island area, Maryborough - Rockhampton area, Queensland,
- Queensland,
- Tasmania,
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Cornwall,
cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,
- New South Wales,
- ca. 1830-1840